U-turn on the Budget

The Government is to reconsider the higher education Budget cuts announced by the Chancellor of the Exchequer last November.

In the first public acknowledgement that the Budget dealt too harshly with universities, deputy prime minister Michael Heseltine told the House of Commons that "we consider carefully - we shall do so again in the forthcoming public expenditure round - the requirements of the higher education sector".

Mr Heseltine was responding to Nicholas Winterton, the Conservative MP for Macclesfield, who said there was a problem with university capital spending reductions and had asked for the deputy prime minister to assist "in ensuring that capital expenditure reductions in higher education do not prejudice the tremendous success of higher education, which is vital to our economy".